


hold on to me

by badritual



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: AU where Rex ages normally, Ahsoka Tano Needs a Hug, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, CT-7567 | Rex Needs a Hug, Don't copy to another site, Drabble, Gen, Hugs, Male-Female Friendship, Not Beta Read, The Author Didn't Like the Thought of Rex Dying Before His Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 06:01:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24040060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badritual/pseuds/badritual
Summary: When Ahsoka lays eyes on him for the first time in nearly twenty years, she’s shocked to find he hasn’t aged a day.
Relationships: CT-7567 | Rex & Ahsoka Tano
Comments: 7
Kudos: 140





	hold on to me

**Author's Note:**

> Actually I was going to write a longer AU where Rex’s clone aging got turned off, so that he and Ahsoka would be more or less in the same age bracket and not like Boomer Rex and his Millennial Togruta daughter or whatever, but…I’m lazy. So it’ll probably just be this one _Rebels_ reunion AU drabble.
> 
> I think I'm still processing my post-finale feels.

When Ahsoka lays eyes on him for the first time in nearly twenty years, she’s shocked to find he hasn’t aged a day. She had always been certain she’d see Rex again, after the went their separate ways in the waning hours of the Clone Wars, but she’d expected… Well, she’d expected a stooped, gray-haired old man. Not the Rex she’d barely been able to look in the eye as she hastily hugged him and then sent him on his way.

Ahsoka drags in a breath and then lets it go. She reaches out and places her palm over his chestplate, lightly. “Rex. You look…”

“Old?” Rex supplies, cocking the corner of his mouth in a familiar half-grin. 

Ahsoka laughs, letting her hand slip away. “You look like you haven’t aged a day,” she teases him.

He _has_ gotten older, but it’s been subtle: there are webs of wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth that weren’t there twenty years ago, and he’s shorn off his bleached blond hair, but for the most part he looks the same to her.

Rex beams at her. “Thought I’d never see you again.”

“I promised you you would,” Ahsoka says, reaching out to squeeze his hands. 

Rex squeezes back. “You did,” he says, rubbing a callused thumb over her equally callused, scarred knuckles. “You got tall.”

“I got old,” Ahsoka says, with a laugh.

“Still a little’un to me,” Rex says, his smile widening, brightening slowly like a rising sun.

Ahsoka tilts her head at Rex. “But I thought…” 

“After the—after everything,” he says, skirting delicately around the fall of the Republic, “it just… It just stopped. Well, it hasn’t stopped completely. It’s slowed.”

“How?” she asks.

“I’m not sure, myself. But I think it was the chip,” Rex says.

“Does this mean you age normally?” Ahsoka can’t bear the thought of outliving her dearest friends.

The Jedi have long been vanquished. Anakin and Padmé are gone. Obi-Wan might as well be. The thought of Rex withering away and dying well before his time sits in the pit of her stomach, uneasily.

“Yeah,” Rex says, finally letting go of her hand to scrub at his scalp. “You’re stuck with me, kid.”

Ahsoka throws her head back and laughs, a genuine full-bodied one that starts in her shoulders and travels throughout. “It’s so nice to hear you call me that again,” she says, throwing her arms around Rex’s neck and squeezing him in another hug. 

Rex’s arms wrap around her middle and squeeze her so tight, she thinks she might pop at the seams. She buries her face in the crook of his neck and holds on for all she’s worth.

After a lifetime of losing friends and loved ones, she’s going to hold onto Rex for as long as she possibly can.


End file.
